


Codex

by uaevuon



Category: No. 6 - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bookstore, Minor Character Death, Trans Character, lowkey nezumi/safu, nezumi makes different choices, technically still the same universe?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2017-04-14
Packaged: 2018-05-08 11:38:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5495726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uaevuon/pseuds/uaevuon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shion finds a rat in a bookstore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Folio

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is a result of me taking a typesetting class and a history of artist's books class in the same semester.

Sure, the bookstore was dark and kind of dusty, and it was out of the way – but Shion knew the book he was looking for would be here and significantly cheaper than the other used bookstore closer to home. He took the old cookbook to the counter, a little bounce in his step because he knew how happy his mother would be at her birthday gift. 

There was a mouse on the register, swiped out of sight by a hand as soon as Shion laid eyes on it, and his eyes followed that hand to its owner. 

It had been four years. Longer hair and more stylish clothing, more than a foot of height, and a million other little changes could and should have obscured the recognition, but despite all that, Shion would know that face anywhere. 

“Nezumi?” In the past years, that word had come to associate in Shion’s mind more as a name than as a rat. 

The familiar face smirked, but said simply, “A mouse, actually. They’re my pets.” The voice was more mature; not deeper -- it was always deep -- but rounder, slower. Yet underneath that it was the same voice as had haunted Shion since he’d heard it last. 

“Oh.” 

“Did you find everything you were looking for?” The smirk grew. 

Shion had an answer in mind, the kind of thing he’d never say, about where Nezumi could shove that antique cash register, but then he realised -- Nezumi was a criminal, a criminal for whom Shion himself had once lost his entire way of life. And Shion would be a fool to think that after what he’d done, there was no-one watching him. If Nezumi was in No. 6, it meant Nezumi had gone through an enormous amount of effort to create false documents that wouldn’t tip off anyone, and had built a life here. Acting like he knew Nezumi could only end very badly for both of them. “Yes,” Shion said simply, his eyes challenging those across from him. He tilted the book in his hands. “It’s a gift for my mother, Karan. Her birthday is tomorrow. I don’t know if you’ve heard of her bakery…” 

“Hm. I’ve been there.” Nezumi handled the book delicately, as if it could fall apart without the utmost care, and typed in the price from memory; there were no price stickers on any of the books, to retain their integrity, but their catalog was online like any other store. “Scan there.” Nezumi indicated the slightly out-of-date ID scanner, a three inch square black card. Normally shops would just do a direct transaction between ID bracelets; maybe Nezumi hadn’t updated to the latest model. But no, there it was on Nezumi’s wrist. 

Shion passed his bracelet over the scanner anyway. 

“Your mother makes good pastries,” Nezumi said. “I believe I once had a cherry cake she made.”

“Karan doesn’t make cherry cake,” Shion said. He realised too late that it was that cake in particular she had made the night Nezumi spent at Shion’s house. 

“Must have been somewhere else, then,” Nezumi continued, unaffected. “I do remember Karan’s though. I’ve been there a few times. Shame you were never there when I came by.”

“I must have been at work,” Shion said. Nezumi’s smirk fell a little, replaced by something annoyed. 

“Paper or plastic?” Nezumi asked, sounding as annoyed as the expression implied. 

“Huh?” 

“Bags.” Nezumi gestured grandly toward said bags. “I have paper and plastic.”

“Paper would be better for the book, wouldn’t it?”

“Good answer.” Nezumi stuck a little receipt inside the cover of Shion’s book, then bagged it and passed it over. “Will the bakery be open tomorrow?”

“Mm-hm. She loves it too much to close.”

“I’ll come by then, and tell her Happy Birthday.” Nezumi indicated the bag. “The receipt has a link to a customer service evaluation. My name is Eve.” 

“Eve?” That… wasn’t right. Couldn’t be right. It didn’t sound like it could ever fit the Nezumi Shion knew. Was he completely mistaken? Was this cashier not his Nezumi at all? “Your name is Eve?” he repeated. 

“That’s what I said.”

“Oh.” It could be an alias, Shion thought. Nezumi would need one to get into the city. Or maybe it was Nezumi’s real name after all. “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow, Eve.”

“You’ll be there?”

Shion nodded. Even if this wasn’t Nezumi, it was so easy for Shion to just stand there and keep talking. “I’m taking off work for mom’s birthday.” 

“See you then.” 

“See you.” Shion kept standing there, staring at Eve as if the weight of his eyes would unravel all the answers he needed. 

Eve stared right back, smile growing the longer Shion looked. “Shion.”

“Hm?”

“Are you staying?”

Shion blushed so fast he started to resemble a cherry himself. “Bye!” He turned and left as fast as he could without breaking into a run. 

“Bye,” Eve said. 

When Shion got home, he realised he’d never given Eve his name. Eve must be Nezumi, he thought. 

\---

In the morning, Shion wrapped up his mother’s gift. He remembered to take Eve’s receipt out, and he filled out the evaluation. He half-expected some sort of note written on the back of the receipt -- “Yes, I’m Nezumi. Burn on sight.” -- but there wasn’t one. 

He left the wrapped-up book on the counter above the chilled pastries, hoping Karan would see it when she put out the lemon squares she’d made the night before. Shion glanced at the clock; it was just after four in the morning. The shop opened at six for those poor souls who’d taken early-morning shifts as well as those coming out of overnights; usually Karan was the one to open the door, but today Shion let her sleep in. He’d taken the day off from his own job, but here he was, working anyway, just at a different place. 

A figure walked past the darkened shop window. Shion startled; usually the streets were empty at this hour. But a face turned to him, and he saw Nezumi’s -- Eve’s smirk, and he calmed. Eve just moved right along, as if it was totally natural for someone to be out at this time of morning, well before dawn. 

Shion’s feet carried him out the door. 

“Eve!” 

Eve stopped and turned to look at Shion. “Good morning, Shion.”

Eve was much more polite than the Nezumi Shion remembered. “We’ve never met before yesterday. How did you know my name?” 

“When you paid for the book, your name came through with the transaction.” Eve said it like Shion should already know that, and he should. 

“Right.” 

“You’re a little scatterbrained, aren’t you?”

Shion was taken aback by that. Sure, he’d been called many things since he was kicked out of his advanced education program -- mostly variations of _failure_ , but a few digs at his apparent intelligence as well. Never scatterbrained, though. He was quite the orderly person, at least where his memory was concerned; some called it “photographic”, but really he just had a method, found connections where others might not, made sense of structure. 

Nezumi just had a structure that was completely unfamiliar. It might take Shion a little more time to figure it out, and until then, all the information that might have turned a spider’s-thread connection into steel never quite made the reach. 

So, yes, for the time being he was scatterbrained. “You’re the one who did the scattering,” he mumbled. 

Eve smirked again. “How so?”

Shion leaned against the door frame, a hand in his messy brown hair. “You’re just, you’re _you_ ,” he emphasized, hoping Nezumi would get it. 

“You think you know me that well.”

“Am I wrong?” Shion asked. 

“I don’t know. I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Eve was still smiling. 

“Come in,” Shion said. He held open the door. 

Eve’s eyebrows raised. “You’re going to invite a stranger into your home?”

“It’s the bakery. And what are you going to do?”

“You’re closed.” 

“Just come in.”

Eve did. There was bread baking, simple whole wheat loaves with nutmeg that Shion knew how to make just as well as his mother did, and they filled the bakery with a warm, inviting smell. Also actual warmth; Eve’s leather jacket and thick, black scarf came off just inside the shop. 

Shion started to move the cooled muffins, which he’d brought out just before Eve’s arrival, into their proper shelved basket. 

“Well? Why did you invite me in?” Eve asked. 

“If you don’t think I know you well, then why don’t we get to know each other? Then I can see if I’m right or wrong about you.”

“What do you want to know?” Eve’s fingers laced together under a pointed chin, supported a curious and amused smile. The black sweater Eve wore was just a little too big, and the over-long sleeves were stretched as if they’d been rolled up too many times. Tan yarn peeked out of one sleeve’s seam, as if Eve had patched it up when it started to unravel. 

Old-style clothing, huh. It didn’t match with the superfibre scarf. Why did Eve need something bulletproof anyway? It wasn’t like anyone was shooting inside No. 6.

“Where are you from?” It was as good a place as any to start. 

“Not anywhere, really. I applied to live in No. 6 a few years ago; before that I was trying to make a life in West Block. I didn’t think I’d ever get accepted here.” It wasn’t a lie. It was just… condensed. Recent. 

“What made you change your mind?”

Eve’s hands moved; one rested on the table, the other came up to cover that ever-changing smile. “That’s a secret.” 

“Hm.”

“How about you? You’ve always been here?”

“Yeah. I was born in No. 6.”

“Lucky you,” Eve said.

 _Am I?_ Shion wondered, but he didn’t dare say it. In any case, the more he spoke with Eve, the more confused he became. Eve sounded like a regular No. 6 resident, full of nothing but admiration for the Holy City, and that was nothing like Nezumi, who at the very least distrusted the authorities. 

Did Nezumi lose all those old memories? Is that what Eve was -- an empty shell, or brainwashed? 

But no. No, that wasn’t possible. There was a playfulness in those familiar grey eyes that spoke of subterfuge, of deceit, of outright lies. There was danger in those eyes. There was life, and also death. 

“I used to live in Chronos, though.” 

“Fancy. What made you move out here?”

“I can’t say exactly. I… made a mistake, and I had to leave.” _You. You were my mistake. But you weren’t a mistake; if I’d known what would happen to me, I would still have done it. And I don’t know why, because I don’t know you. But I want to._ “Maybe mistake isn’t the right word.”

“I would hope not,” Eve said, and then followed it with, “It would take more than a mistake to lose that much, wouldn’t it?”

“I guess so.” He took the muffin tin into the kitchen to avoid any more questions about it. Talking about that day might make Nezumi open up to him, but it could also get Shion in enormous trouble if someone found out. More trouble than he was in already. 

“So you can bake too?” Eve called out, not too loud as it was still very early. 

“Of course. You think my mom wouldn’t teach me? I’m not as good as her, though.” 

“I’ll be the judge of that. Can I get a muffin?”

“They’re blueberry,” Shion said. 

“Sounds delicious.” 

Shion handed over a muffin, and then tried to bring up the bakery’s transaction application on his ID bracelet, but it wouldn’t come up. “Oh, right. Shop hours haven’t started yet.”

“That’s fine.” Eve put down a few little squares on the counter. “Three copper, right?” 

“Oh. Yeah.” Shion tried to remember how to work the mechanical till. It wasn’t as ancient as Eve’s, but it was still from before Shion’s time, and it wasn’t as intuitive as a little swipe of ID bracelets. 

“I prefer to pay in physical money,” Eve explained. 

It didn’t bother Shion; all the coins had a digital signature anyway. Some people just liked the feeling of handling money, or found they could keep track of their spendings better if they saw every coin leave their hands. Truth be told, Shion thought it was a good idea; he just preferred the ease of using his ID and didn’t much like the register. He dropped the coins into an empty compartment when he managed to open it and left himself a note to scan them when the shop officially opened for the day. The till was mostly empty, only a few copper and silver pieces, and a lonely gold from a larger order a few weeks back. A wedding cake, if Shion remembered correctly. 

_If_ he… of course he remembered correctly. And why was he getting so caught up in cakes with Nezumi in the flesh, eating one of his own muffins on the other side of the counter? 

“Good?” Shion asked. 

“Mm,” Eve responded. “Delicious. Just as I’d expect of Karan.” 

“I made that, remember?”

“But she taught you. And I’m not surprised. Mothers are always teaching their kids things.”

“What did your mother teach you?” 

Eve’s eyes narrowed, not in anger but there was a little pain beyond the concentration. “She taught me to sing.” 

“Oh.” 

“I sing at funerals, mostly. They say my voice is so beautiful it carries souls away to heaven.” Eve snorted. “Kindest murder I’ve ever heard of.” 

“Do you ever get tired of it?”

“Of course. That’s why I have my books.” 

“Do you read them all?” 

Eve nodded. “And then some. I print my own sometimes.”

“You write.” Of course. Of course Eve sings, and writes, and likes Shion’s muffins, and does weird things like pay in coppers and self-publish books… 

“I do, but I print classics. My writing should never see the light of day. Not in a city like this anyway; it’s not the right quality.” Quality… or subject? The muffin was gone; Eve folded up the wrapper in half, then quarters, then eighths, and then let go and it wouldn’t stay folded but Eve was already moving on. “Come by the shop again. My press is in the back.” 

“...Your press.” The word was familiar, but Shion didn’t understand it in this context. Press is either a verb, meaning to squeeze or push, or it’s a noun, as a sort of collective term for news reporting. 

“Yes. A printing press. Ophelia Press is the name.”

Printing press. What? “So, you don’t just… print it.” 

“No. Well, I can. That’s how I design it. But then I set the type by hand and… press it.” 

It was like the coppers, Shion decided, like the patched-up sweater and the hoard of classic novels that he’d been shooed away from on his scientific life track in Chronos and which he’d only barely come across even in Lost Town until he’d stepped into Eve’s used book store after a series of glittering reviews. Eve liked old things, physical things. 

“I like the exertion, and the repetition.” Eve leaned in toward Shion. “The money isn’t too bad either. It doesn’t exactly pay for my labour, but I do it for fun and there are always people from Chronos looking for something beautiful made by a poor handcrafter.” Eve didn’t say it with any sort of malice or derision, but those eyes told a different story; they rolled, then settled on Shion with a glint that clearly pointed out Eve had made a joke at the expense of those Chronos citizens. 

Shion wasn’t sure how he felt about that. The idea that Chronos residents came to Lost Town as tourists unsettled him just as much as the idea that Lost Town residents took advantage of them to sell something expensive -- but then, it wasn’t as if the Chronos residents couldn’t afford it. Shion had owned a few very pretty hand-made possessions, once upon a time. Now they were few and far between. 

The hardest part to wrap his head around was that Eve seemed to hold some sort of animosity towards Chronos. He didn’t understand it at all. Hadn’t he, at the time a Chronos resident himself, once been the very one to take in Nezumi, to dress Nezumi’s wounds, to hide VC-103221 from the authorities? 

But Eve was moving on once again. “You get lost in thought a lot.”

“Should I not think?”

“Sometimes you just need to stop thinking and act.” 

“I don’t know if that way of life is for everyone.” Whether in Chronos or Lost Town, Shion’s life had always depended on careful planning and mindful decision-making. Just act? It wasn’t something he thought he could ever do. He wasn’t cut out for it; that just wasn’t how he _worked_. 

Eve shrugged. “Suit yourself. But you can’t know everything, certainly not just by thinking.”

“No, but I can learn more if I’ve thought out how I want to go about it.” 

Eve smiled, and looked at the clock. “Do you have any more baking to do?”

“The next batch of bread comes out at five.” Shion took off his apron and circled around the counter, taking a seat next to Eve. 

“What are you doing?” Eve asked. 

“Trying to figure out who you are,” Shion answered. It could be taken any number of ways, and he liked that. He felt like he was starting to get the hang of tiptoeing around Eve, trying to protect Nezumi for a second time. 

Suddenly, he felt something cold on his neck. 

“If this was a knife,” Eve said, holding a plastic spoon to Shion’s throat, “you’d be dead.” 

Shion swallowed. 

“Like I said, you think too much. Pay attention.” Eve put the spoon down on the counter. 

“Yeah.” _It’s you,_ Shion thought. _It really is you._

_You’re going to get me killed._

\---

 _You’re going to get me killed,_ Eve thought, re-folding the muffin paper. Diagonal to face, match opposite sides, press in centre, crease under finger, crease again under nail. Turn. Repeat. Folding was second-nature at this point, as was tearing and cranking and brushing and setting and turning off air vents at the end of a long day of printing. 

So was wondering which day would be the one in which life would end, but it wasn’t so present after all this time. Two years in No. 6, two years under the thumb of the very city that had imprisoned and tortured and nearly killed Eve once before… it had to count for something. The longer one lived, the better one got at living, or so they said. 

Shion was back, though. Eve never counted on that. 

Hearing Shion say “Nezumi” had been heart-stopping, until Eve realised who it was saying the name. Eve supposed Shion was right in a way to use that name; it was certainly more fitting than this ridiculous alias, no matter what else had changed since the last time Eve heard it. 

Still, Eve was Eve, at least here; Eve was a very different person from Nezumi, mostly an act, and spending far too much effort to hide the attempts at taking down No. 6 from the inside -- and it wasn’t working. Perhaps it wasn’t worth it in the first place. How idealistic Nezumi had once been to think that No. 6 would allow any change from within. 

“Shion,” Eve said. 

“What is it?” Shion was carrying a large tray full of bread like it was nothing; he clearly wasn’t quite as weak as his stick-thin limbs implied. 

“You don’t usually work here. Where do you work?”

“Park sanitation. I control the cleaner robots.”

“Baking not fulfilling enough for you?”

“It’s not that.” Shion started stacking the bread in its shelves. “How do I say this… It’s the right place for me.”

Eve got off the bar stool and moved towards Shion, slowly so as not to startle him. “Does it have something to do with why you left Chronos?”

A loaf of bread slipped from Shion’s fingers; Eve leapt forward and grabbed it before it hit the ground. 

“That’s a yes.”

“Please don’t ask me about Chronos,” Shion said. He started stacking bread again. 

“Fine.” Eve stared at the just-caught bread. “I suppose you can’t sell this.”

“Hm?” Shion looked at the bread as well. The crust was dented, and more importantly Nezumi -- Eve was holding it, and Shion had no clue how clean those hands were. “Not unless you want to buy it.”

“I’ll take it,” Eve said, having already intended to. 

“I can discount it, since I dropped it. It’s my fault it got dented.”

“Don’t worry about it.” 

“But--!”

“Shh.” Eve pressed the loaf against Shion’s mouth to shut him up. “Don’t worry about it. You can pay me back by coming to my bookstore.”

“I don’t really buy a lot of books,” Shion said behind the bread. 

Eve shrugged. “Come anyway. You’re interesting. It’s better than being alone all day, anyway.”

“You don’t get a lot of business?”

“Mm, I do, but customers aren’t the same as people who come to talk to me.” Eve tipped the bread away from Shion’s face and bit a chunk out of it. “Mm. Delicious.” 

Shion’s ears turned red; Eve was pretty sure he didn’t notice. 

“What is it?” Eve asked. “Your ears are red.”

“Wha -- well. It’s just, you’re saying my bread is delicious, I guess. But it’s nothing like Mom’s.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.” Eve moved closer and tapped the edge of the loaf against Shion’s lips again, the crunchy place where Eve had bitten into it. “Want to share?”

“Um. Sure.” Shion took the bread between his teeth and tore off a bit. 

Eve didn’t scowl. Scowling was Nezumi’s thing, and yes they were the same person but Eve was Nezumi’s character and Nezumi had long since decided that Eve did not scowl. Eve was a content, if sarcastic, No. 6 citizen. But Eve did frown, just a little bit, because _wow_ Shion was unobservant. Either that or he was just very straightforward. 

In another place, Eve might have been more cautious, less flirtatious. Might have pushed Shion away rather than invite him in. But perhaps there was something to be said for a city in which all of one’s worries were accounted for. Perhaps the idealism that brought the other five cities up had turned out better than the greed, the destruction that brought this one to the light; the everyday that Eve experienced here might not there be undermined by the suffering of the West Block and the genocide of… 

“Are you staying?” Shion asked. He tried to mimic how Eve had said it the previous day; unfortunately, mocking wasn’t so much in his nature. 

“Not for long. I have my own job.” 

“How early do you open?”

“Whenever I get there.” 

Shion tilted his head. “You seem young to be self-employed.”

“I’m supposed to wake up my teacher when I get there.”

“Your teacher?” 

“I’m one of Yaki-sensei’s apprentices. You know, the shop is named for him.”

Oh. Of course. _Yakihon_ \-- Night Air Books. Or, Yaki’s books. 

“You think it’s _ya-ki_ like ‘night’ and ‘spirit’, don’t you?” 

“Huh?” 

Eve grinned. “Everyone does. He wants them to. That’s why he put it in katakana; that way you can decide what you want it to mean. But his parents named him after stir-fry, because they had yakisoba on their first date.”

Shion didn’t know whether or not to laugh. “So, it’s Stir-Fry Books.” 

“Delicious, right?” 

“That can’t be right,” Shion said. No-one would name their child after food!

...Then again, he was perfectly fine accepting “Rat” as a name. 

Eve seemed to understand his train of thought and let it go. “He’s a nice man,” Eve said. “If a little narrow-minded.”

“What do you mean?” 

“What do I mean?” Eve repeated, in an undertone. “I guess you’ll have to meet him to find out.”

Footsteps sounded on the stairs from their second-floor apartment, and Karan appeared. 

Shion stood. “Mom! You’re supposed to be sleeping in.”

“I know,” she said, a bit apologetically. “But I was already awake, and it smelled so nice down here. Who’s this?” Karan asked, noticing Eve. “A friend of yours?”

Eve stood and held out a hand to shake. “I’m Eve. Shion bought your present from me yesterday.”

“Present --?” Karan wondered aloud, and saw Shion startle next to her. 

“I wanted to say happy birthday to you. You make lovely things here.” Eve laid it on thick -- acting had its merits, and the ability to charm anyone at any time was one of them. 

“Oh, um. Thank you,” Karan flustered. 

“Your present is on the counter, Mom,” Shion said, looking a little down. “I was hoping you’d get a surprise.”

“Well, Eve here surprised me. I suppose that’s enough for now.” She unwrapped the gift and smiled. “Oh, Shion.” 

“You, um, you said you liked that chef.”

“I do. Thank you so much.” Karan hugged her son tight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> codex - a book of hand-written (manuscript) pages, held together by stitching.  
> folio - a sheet of paper, folded in half and printed on both sides to make four pages of text; a book made of such pages; page numbers printed on the represented page.


	2. Quarto

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lessons in typesetting. Scrub-scrub!

The next time Shion entered the bookstore, he saw neither hide nor hair of Eve. Instead, an older, balding man sat on a stool behind the register, his slight beer-belly resting against the counter. It appeared he was taking inventory by hand; he had an older model of the ID bracelet plugged into a computer monitor showing the stock list for the shop, and a notebook open in front of him. The clock behind him read 5:45 PM; an intermittent clanking noise sounded from some unidentified place within the shop. 

It was at this point Shion realised he had no idea what Eve’s hours were. 

“Excuse me…” He interrupted the mystery man’s note-taking. “Is Eve around today?”

Without looking up, the man yelled out -- “EEEEEEEEVE!”

The door to the back room opened; out came a cacophony of old-style motor noise, followed by Eve’s head and shoulders. “ _What?!_ ” Eve snapped, and then caught sight of Shion. “Oh. You’re here.” Eve held the door open a little wider, revealing a disgustingly messy striped apron over what appeared to be, from what little of it was visible, a very tight tank top. “Come on back.”

“Wait, _what_? You can’t just invite people back there!” 

“Too late,” Eve said. Not willing to wait any longer, Eve grabbed Shion by the wrist and pulled him around the counter. “I promised him I’d show him the presses.”

The man squinted at the two of them for a moment, then said, “You know, if you’re gay, you can just tell me.”

Eve’s eyes rolled. “Shut up, old man.” 

The door swung heavily shut behind the pair as Eve dragged Shion into the very loud press room. “That was Yaki. What a bastard.” Eve let go of Shion. “Wait here.”

“O...kay?” Shion stayed put and watched Eve move back to the press. Now that he could see Eve from the back, he realised the tank top was actually quite short, and he could see most of Eve’s back. For some reason, Shion felt his face heating up. 

Eve turned to what Shion assumed was the press; a worn-out metal plaque on the side facing Shion read _Vandercook_. The thing was mostly metal, with some quickly rolling mechanised cylinders horizontally across the top, and one stationary one with a hand crank attached. 

“Um, Eve?”

“Quiet. I’m going to finish this run, then we’ll talk.” 

Shion stayed quiet and watched. Eve stepped on a pedal near the base of the press, slid a few sheets of paper (one white, the rest gray) under some sort of… clamps? and turned the crank, moving all of the visible cylinders down to the end of the press. Then, Eve grabbed the pages, rolled back the cylinders, and laid out the top page to inspect the text. 

Then, Eve printed another. And another. And at least twenty more. There had already been a stack of god-knows-how-many printed sheets when Shion came in; this seemed to just be Eve finishing up. 

“Do you want to help me clean the press?” Eve asked, when all the printing was done, the type was off the press and washed, and the motors were turned off. 

“Sure.” 

“Take off your sweater,” Eve said. “No loose clothing near the presses.”

Shion left his sweater on a chair that looked relatively free of ink, and rolled up his sleeves. Eve handed him another apron, and after he put it on, a pair of purple nitrile gloves and a rag. 

“We use this stuff,” Eve held up a large, rectangular can with a yellow label, “to wash the rollers. You put a whole bunch on the rag --” Eve demonstrated this “-- and then this roller comes off when you unhook the springs. Move it to the front of the press, and then wipe it down until it dries without any shininess. The inky is shiny; the roller isn’t. This roller comes right off without any springs; you clean it the same way.” Eve pointed at the first roller. “You wash that one. I’ll do the other, and you can tell me when you think you’re done.” 

Shion had enough practice cleaning his mother’s rolling pins that he was pretty sure he could handle a few rubber ink rollers, so he doused the rag in the foul-smelling wash and started scrubbing. 

“Always make sure you have air vents on when printing and cleaning,” Eve said. “The ink has toxic fumes and so do the cleaners; also, the presses get hot and the vents keep it a little cooler in here. Make sure you get the ends of that roller.”

Shion scrubbed a little harder at the roller’s edges, which were still a little shiny. “Do you have to clean it every time you print?”

“Absolutely. The ink dries onto the press within a few hours, and then it’s impossible to get off. Replacements are just as impossible to find.” 

“I think mine’s clean,” Shion said. He held it out for Eve to inspect. 

The roller _was_ clean; it was the same black as the ink that had just covered it, but now matte rather than shiny. There weren’t even any streaks left. “Pretty good for your first time. The other rollers are harder.”

Eve set the rubber rollers back down at the front of the press and wet a clean-ish rag with the same solvent. “These three rollers, you can see from the side, are metal. They’ll be silver when they’re clean. It’s hard to tell when they’re completely clean, though; I usually just keep going until I’m tired of it. The top two aren’t too hard.” Eve stuck a finger in one of the holes on the larger roller’s side and swiped the rag across the front. “You just wipe, and turn the roller, and wipe, and turn. And when it looks clean, you keep going. The little one on top goes fast; just wipe that down a couple times on each side. The one down there…” Eve pointed into the heart of the machine, where about a quarter of a roller’s surface was visible. “That one’s a pain. You have to clean it while the press is running, and it only runs one speed. We’ll do the top ones first.” 

Eve left the large roller to Shion, having cleaned it about halfway during the demonstration, and quickly wiped down the thin one above it while Shion, brows furrowed, worked at it. Standing back, Eve watched Shion work. 

_He doesn’t even know why he’s cleaning this press, but he’s doing it. What the hell?_ Eve thought. _He just follows my orders like some dog. Wonder what would happen if I told him to kiss me._ Eve chuckled; there was no chance Eve would ever ask that, but Shion would probably just do it, and then after maybe he’d bother to ask why. 

Or maybe he wouldn’t. 

“Is it clean?” Shion asked. 

Eve’s eyes narrowed. The roller was as clean as it had been when Eve started -- maybe cleaner. “Yeah. Ready for the last one?”

“Okay.”

Eve switched the press on and off a few times; satisfied with the noise the motor made, Eve left it running. “Always jog the press like that when it’s been off for a while. If you hear a clanking or grinding, it means something fell in there and got stuck, and either I or Yaki can open it up and clear it. With this roller, you don’t want the rag to be completely soaked, because the solvent can degrade some of the parts inside. But it should still be pretty wet. The half-used rags we just used should be fine for now; you really only need a clean one for the very end.” Eve balled up the rag and held a smooth side against one edge of the roller while it turned. “You can just hold the rag and let the motor do the work for you; just make sure you hold it tight so it doesn’t get caught.” Eve moved the rag slowly across the roller; with its spinning, the cleaning left a spiral behind. “When it starts leaving dark streaks… like that --” about halfway down the roller “-- move to a cleaner part of the rag.”

“Okay,” Shion said, and jumped right in without Eve even asking him to. 

Eve moved back so they wouldn’t be cleaning on top of each other, and watched Shion again. _I bet he puts his all into every damn thing he does…_

“So why am I doing this, anyway?”

“I’m going to teach you how to set type next,” Eve said in lieu of a real answer. “If you end up printing eventually, I want to make sure you know how to clean the press, too.” 

“Oh, you don’t have to teach me.”

“I don’t have to, but I want to. And anyway, I can get my own master printing license if I teach someone else, and then I won’t have to deal with Stir-Fry anymore.” 

“Are you going to open your own bookstore?”

“Yeah, preferably in No. 5.”

“Why not here?” 

Eve leaned against the next press, the middle of three, trying to come off as more nonchalant than excited, though the latter was closer to the truth. “I prefer printing in English, but we don’t do much of that here, even if we have some type.” It wasn’t a lie. But it also wasn’t the whole truth. Crafting partial truths was Eve’s specialty. “Do you speak it?”

“Some.”

“That’s good. I’ll teach you to set in English then; it’s almost impossible in Japanese, unless you want to do the whole thing in hiragana.” 

“If you say so.”

“Do you not see the walls of kanji?” Eve gestured to three of the four walls in the room -- the front and sides -- which were taken up entirely by upright wooden cases, tilted slightly back towards the wall, with more tiny metal bits than Shion could even estimate. Somehow he hadn’t noticed until now, but they were all Japanese type. “We only have one typeface, in three sizes, because there’s so damn _much_ of it. The pages I was printing when you came in took me a week to set.” 

“Why would you do it, then?” 

“I’m bored,” Eve confessed. “You showing up is the first interesting thing that’s happened to me since second puberty. Yaki pays me for ten hours a day, every day, to either watch the register or print something, and I end up in here longer than that because I have nothing else to do.” It hit Eve, then, just how slow the going was of tearing down No. 6 from its heart outwards. Mice could only move so fast, and the same with information; even if every scrap Eve found went out, there wasn’t much to be found in Lost Town. If only Shion was still living in Chronos; if only he’d just been passing through when he first walked in to Yakihon… 

But that was impossible. Eve should have known already, long before stumbling upon his brown-eyed saviour, that there was no way Shion could have gotten away with harbouring a criminal. 

“When we don’t have a job or a project, I set ancient poetry and print it off on reject handmade paper that we get free alongside our orders from a papermill outside No. 2, and I do it because it’s the only fun left in this… business.” Eve stumbled on words, almost having said _the only fun left in this city…_ Too critical. Far too critical. 

“...You think I’m interesting?” Shion asked. 

“Trust you to focus on that part. Are you done cleaning that roller?”

Surprisingly, Shion was still paying attention to the running press as well as Eve. “Almost.” He switched out his dirty rag for a clean one and wiped down the remaining film of ink streaks. “How’s that?”

“I think you clean better than I do. Maybe I can get Yaki to hire you.” 

“I have a job.”

“Wouldn’t you rather work here? Have me tell you how interesting you are all day while you clean up my messes.”

Shion smiled like he was perfectly content with his life. “I have other messes to clean up.” 

Eve sighed. “Come on. Let’s set some type.” Eve shut off the press, and then picked up the tray that held the just-printed type. “How much do you know about pie?”

“My mom usually handles the pies.”

Eve, very intentionally, let go of the tray of type. Shion watched it fall for a moment, and then his ineffectually slow reflexes kicked in; he reached for the tray just as it hit the floor. All of the type so neatly arranged on it scattered in a pile between their feet.

Pointing towards this pile, Eve said: “That is pie.” 

“That took you a week--!”

“And now it’s pie. And I’ll have to sort it out by hand, because we can’t put sorting sensors in the type as it’s made of lead. So, don’t drop your type unless you’re doing it strategically. And don’t set more than one line at a time.” Eve stepped over the pie, leaving it on the ground for the time being.

The door leaning to the bookstore opened and Yaki poked his head in. “Did you just pie that?” 

“I’m teaching Shion a lesson,” Eve said, back turned. 

“If you dented it, I swear to God I’ll fire --”

“You can’t fire me. Who else is going to work double-overtime for free?” 

Yaki pointed at Eve, shook his finger a little, and then huffed and left the room. 

“He’s a terrible businessman,” Eve said of Yaki. “Don’t know how he managed this shop before me. Anyway.” Eve handed Shion what to him was a strange metal contraption. Rectangular, with a sort of lever about halfway through. 

Shion lifted this lever, and an L-shaped piece attached to it came off the larger frame. “Oh. Did… did I break it?”

“No. That’s supposed to happen. This is a composing stick; the part you took off is the knee. You use that to mark your measure, which is how long a line is, and to hold the type in place.” Eve took the knee out of Shion’s hand and stuck it back onto the composing stick by a line marked 25. “Type uses a different measuring system from any you’re used to. It uses points and picas. An inch is six picas, so a pica is a little less than half a centimetre. Make sense?”

“Sure.”

“And there are twelve points in a pica.”

“Twelve points in a pica, six picas in an inch.”

“Yes. I’ve set you a measure of twenty-five picas. You should usually set your measure on a multiple of five, just because most of the line spacing we have is cut to fit that. For your first typesetting day, you’re going to use twenty-four point English Caslon. And be careful with it; it was valuable when it was new and it’s about priceless now.”

“You’re giving me something priceless when I’m new to this?” Shion said, but he followed Eve to the type cases marked “E. Caslon” anyway. 

Eve opened up the 24 point case; inside were many compartments, filled with type all neatly arranged standing up. “Yes, so like I said, be careful. Pick a short phrase in English; don’t tell me what it is. And you’re going to figure out for yourself which letters are sorted into which of these compartments. It’s not like a keyboard, so don’t think that will help you.” Eve pointed out three of the compartments. “These are em-spaces; they’re the same shape as an M, but without the letter, and they’re used to space out the end of the line. You should have at least one at each end. These are en-spaces; they’re half the width of an em-space but they’re not the same shape as an N. Ignore them unless you need them for spacing. These are word spaces. You put them between words. And you’ll set the type upside-down and backwards so it prints correctly. Any questions?”

“I’m sure I’ll have more when I do it.”

“Alright. Get started. I’m going to start sorting out my pie.”

\---

“I’m done!” Shion said after about ten minutes. He shuffled across the shop, clutching his composing stick tightly so as not to drop it, and when he stopped in front of Eve he looked down at it for a few moments more before presenting it. 

It was amateur work, clearly; the fit on the measure was a bit loose, as Eve hadn’t shown Shion the thinner brass and copper spacing, and it had taken him ten minutes to fill out the line. but the type was in the right direction. “Not bad,” Eve said… and then read it. “Oh.” 

**Did we meet 4 years ago?**

“Yes,” Eve said, and then met Shion’s eyes. “You catch on quick.”

Shion beamed. 

The door opened again, and Yaki strode in, yawning. “I need to piss,” he said, and then stopped short as a line of freshly set type clattered to the ground. 

Shion had tilted the stick forward, sending his loosely-set line of type to pie. “Whoops!” he said, and it was just convincing enough that Yaki bought it. 

Yaki frowned, directing it at Eve. “I told you not to just invite people here. That’s two pies in one day.” 

“I’m teaching him,” Eve said. “Didn’t you say I could become a master if I taught someone? And how great would it be for business if we had _two_ master printers in here?”

“I already know you’re planning to leave,” Yaki said. 

“Well then, Shion can be my replacement,” Eve offered. “In the meantime, I’m going to teach Shion the joys of typography. Have a nice piss.” 

As soon as Yaki shut the bathroom door, Shion jumped onto Eve, laughing. Eve stumbled a bit, not expecting the sudden movement, and in trying not to step on the type, ended up half-leaning against a press. Shion’s hands felt way too warm on Eve’s bare shoulders. 

“Shion!” Eve shouted. “Calm down!” 

“Sorry! I’m just really happy.” Shion stepped back for a moment, his hands still on Eve’s shoulders. “I can’t believe this. I-- you--” He shook his head and just hugged Eve again. 

Yaki came back out of the bathroom while they were still hugging; Eve mumbled “You don’t need to be this happy about setting type…” 

“Like I said earlier…” Yaki began. 

Eve gave him a nasty look before he could finish, and then refocused on rubbing Shion’s back. 

“Fine! I’ll leave. Can’t even talk in my own shop…” He left for the store area, leaving Shion and Eve alone once more. 

“Was that about the gay thing?” Shion asked. “How he said earlier, if you were gay, you should tell him?”

“Probably. What an ass.” 

“ _Are_ you gay?”

“No,” Eve said, with what should have been a finality. “Of all the things I am, gay isn’t one of them.”

“Oh. I thought you might have been. But, well, I can’t really tell, not a lot of guys flirt with me, so…”

“Wait,” Eve said. “Did you-- do you think I’m a guy?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you know anything about my patterns with long fics, you probably saw this coming. 
> 
> quarto - a sheet of paper folded twice and printed on both sides to make eight pages; a book consisting of pages made in this manner.  
> vandercook - a brand of printing presses. i’m familiar with using a vandercook sp15 and sp20, but i believe my description can cover a few more models.


	3. Sexto

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Queen of Rats. The Knight of Snakes. The Queen of Bees.

“Do you think I’m a guy?” Eve asked, then gently pushed Shion back and laughed, not because it was funny, but because it was incredibly awkward. “That was a pretty big miscommunication.”

Shion stared, completely baffled by this particular turn of events, more so than what was usual around Eve. 

“I mean I get it. I definitely grew up thinking I was a boy. But you, uh, learn things when you have the space to think about it.” _Space_ , huh? A rat in a slightly bigger cage had space, too. 

“So then,” Shion mumbled, “are you a woman?”

“Yeah.” 

“Then…” Shion glanced at his little pile of type on the floor, a jumble that had once read _Did we meet 4 years ago?_

“Oh, that’s all still true. Like I said, I thought I was a boy. So did you.” Eve scratched at an arm; her skin had started to tingle as a result of this severe awkwardness. “I guess this is all new to you.” 

“What is?”

“The whole… changing genders thing.”

“Not at all.”

“No?”

Shion shook his head. “I know what it means to be transgender.” 

“Oh.” She almost didn’t want to ask, because she didn’t want to be let down, but she asked anyway -- “Are you?”

“Not that I know of.”

Well, it wasn’t a _no_. But it also wasn’t a _yes_ , so Eve couldn’t help but feel a little… empty. 

“Um…” Shion clasped his hands behind his back, rocked back and forth on his feet. “Maybe this isn’t a great time to ask, but.”

“What is it?”

“... _Were_ you flirting with me?” Shion asked 

“Yes,” Eve said. Dear god, if you didn’t tell this boy something frankly it might go right over his head… 

“Okay.” 

“Is that a problem?” Eve asked, defensive. 

“No! No, I was just wondering.”

“Wondering.” Eve looked off to the side, wondering herself what was the best way to throw Shion out. 

“Well, yeah. Because I’ve been trying to do the same, but I’m not very good at it.” Shion said this matter-of-fact, not in the least embarrassed by it. Eve thought he had strange priorities. 

“You were flirting with me when you thought I was a guy?”

“Yes.”

“Are you gay?” 

“I don’t think so. I’ve never thought about it. You’re the first person I’ve ever thought about that way.” 

“What way?” 

_That_ embarrassed him. “Um.” Shion stammered a bit. “That’s not…” 

“Shion.”

“W-what?”

“Close your eyes.”

Shion’s eyes widened at first, but then he obediently squeezed them shut. He was shaking as Eve came close, and when he felt her breath on his face he gasped just a little. 

“Don’t move.”

Eve wanted so badly to kiss him. It wasn’t even just that he was cute and had immense potential as her sidekick for taking down No. 6 -- he was also standing there, so docile and submissive and just waiting for her to make that move. 

But, she couldn’t. 

A centimetre from Shion’s lips, she breathed: “You’ll get a kiss when I know you deserve one.” And she backed away and returned to her pile of Japanese type. “Clean up your pie before Yaki comes back in.”

Shion stood there for a moment, stunned, then let out the tiniest laugh. He picked up his type and returned to the case, shaking his head. 

\---

Eve was already waiting for Shion when he next returned to Ophelia Press. She temporarily abandoned the broadside she was setting and took up a new composing stick. She opened up the Caslon 16 case and set the type faster than Shion thought possible. Eve left it upon the same workspace Shion had used the previous week. He almost turned it around to read it, but thought he may as well get used to reading upside down and backwards since he would be setting type that way. 

**Don’t wear your ID while you’re in here.**

Shion caught Eve’s eye -- by now she was back across the room -- and nodded at her. He set his ID on a clear type case. “Is there anything you want me to do today?” 

“Set type. Fast as you can, set short sentences and give them to me. I’ll check to make sure you haven’t fucked it up. You need to learn your way around the case before I set you loose on longer things.” 

“When should I start on the kanji?”

“Pft.” Eve shook her head. “We’ll talk about that when we get there. No more talking.”

\---

Yaki brought lunch for all three of them. He always brought extra, mostly because he only knew how to cook for four at the minimum and didn’t like leftovers, and Eve would take free things where she could get them. It took some prodding to get Shion to accept it, but after he did and Eve reminded him to wash off the lead dust and ink smudged all over his hands, they ate in the store, because they couldn’t eat in the press room surrounded by lead and solvents. 

Mostly, Eve watched Shion eat. She was sure Shion noticed, but then she didn’t really try to hide it. Didn’t need to, now that they’d reached the understanding that there was mutual flirting going on between them and Eve really couldn’t make Shion feel much more awkward. 

Thing is, Shion only barely noticed -- only barely looked up from his food, his brows furrowed in a concentration Eve couldn’t even begin to understand. And she certainly wasn’t going to ask with Yaki around. 

She wondered if it had to do with anything that had transpired while he set type and she put hers away. He’d mostly asked her a lot of yes-or-no questions, and nothing particularly hefty or dangerous, except for when he’d asked if she still had a tracking chip inside her. To which she’d replied, through quickly set text, that no, she’d cut it out of herself almost as soon as she escaped No. 6. It was a useless piece of metal by that point, but she would take no chances. 

Back then, at least, she wouldn’t take chances. Now, every day of her life was a risk. Any day now, someone could ask her the wrong question, or look at her the wrong way and see what little remained of VC-103221 in a face which had undergone a puberty-and-a-half, or she could just step too far over a line she didn’t even see. There were so many traps in No. 6, and rats did so easily get caught in traps. 

And Shion was nothing if not a rat-trap, a risk, but there was no going back once they’d found each other again. No hope of returning to the bliss of ignorance. Their first meeting alone was enough to shake their lives to the core; coming together once more in Yakihon was almost like… coming home. 

Home. Eve hadn’t felt _home_ in years. 

She suddenly felt ill. She had half a mind to blame Yaki’s food, but even if the man was abrasive and thought of her as a man no matter what she told him, he paid her decently and he cooked spectacularly, so she’d deal with it. 

So the unsettling feeling in her stomach was all her own. All for that single word -- _home_. To apply it to Shion, when she barely knew him, was… 

Shion met Eve’s eyes, finally, and held the stare even after she looked away. 

… Terrifying. It was terrifying, to find herself at home in this boy, the greatest danger to her tenuous way of life. 

The stare, which she could still feel even if she didn’t see it, was like a snake about to move in for the kill. And Eve would not be snake food. 

She stood and tucked her empty plate into the bin beneath the register that Yaki always used for transporting lunch, and she took a seat at the counter, drumming fingers against its scratched wooden top. 

Outside, autumn leaves swirled down the street, caught by the wind. The streets were empty; they took lunch late in Yakihon, after all, so that the lunch-hour rush -- if a dozen people could be considered a “rush” -- was always fully staffed. 

“Is it alright if I bring a friend tomorrow?” Shion asked. 

“It’s a public store,” Eve answered. “If you want to take them into the press, ask Yaki.”

“You didn’t ask me to bring in your boyfriend,” Yaki grumbled. 

“He’s my apprentice,” Eve said. 

“I just thought you two might want to meet,” Shion said. “She likes old things, just like you do.” 

“...Old?”

“Yeah. She wears handmade sweaters, reads paper books instead of electronic ones. Though I think she still pays by ID.”

Well… she didn’t sound like a bad person. Not that Eve considered herself the best suited for judging moral character but it didn’t see likely that they were going to outright despise each other, or that this friend of Shion’s would be hell-bent on ruining Eve’s life. But something unsettled her about it… 

“We used to be in classes together, back in Chronos,” Shion continued. “I haven’t actually seen her in years, until a few weeks ago.”

Oh. “And you want to bring her _here _?” You barely know her!, Eve wanted to shout. Get it through this boy’s thick skull that everyone in No. 6 was an enemy by default; even if they weren’t precisely _bad_ , well, they weren’t _good_ by Eve’s standards. And if they’d been in classes together -- what were the odds she’d seen VC-103221, could remember that face well enough to see it reflected in Eve’s? The chance was significantly higher than the general populace, if her academic standing was that good. __

__“Well, yes,” Shion said. “I may not have been around her much recently, but I know her pretty well. She’ll like you.”_ _

__“That’s not what I’m --” It was so easy to get caught up in conversation with Shion, to almost say something that would completely destroy both of them. “Don’t you have a job?” she asked instead of finishing her original sentence._ _

__“It’s the weekend. I only work Monday through Thursday.”_ _

__Right. Of course. Only Eve worked ten-plus hours every day for fun._ _

__\---_ _

__Eve was alone all the next morning. She’d told Shion there was no need to make regular hours -- it’s not like he was going into printing professionally or anything, and Eve was in no rush, so there was no reason to be in the print shop at every free moment. Besides, Eve assumed Shion would be with his friend and they wouldn’t want to spend the whole day in a dusty old bookstore._ _

__Still, the quiet was… boring. Even just setting type in silence across the room from Shion was at least a little bit interesting; she knew she’d get a sentence or two every once in a while. Next time Shion came in Eve hoped to have him start on paragraphs, maybe give him an assignment or two. Even just knowing he was there was enough._ _

__Eve didn’t realise how starved for attention she was until someone gave her that attention._ _

__Instead, she set type alone, a classic novel according to Yaki’s designs, slowly picking the pieces off the walls and carefully tying off blocks of text to be printed when she had a full signature’s worth._ _

__Even if setting type in Japanese was a much more time-consuming process than English, well… at least every character fit in the same size piece of type. Spacing always ended up perfect and even, and that was so satisfying when compared to the multitude of itty-bitty spacing it took to justify a line in English._ _

__“Where’s your apprentice?” Yaki asked of Eve when he passed through the Ophelia on the way to the bathroom._ _

__“Don’t know. I didn’t ask. I’m not his keeper.”_ _

__“Thought you’d try and get regular hours out of him.”_ _

__“You didn’t,” Eve said, and it was true; she’d only gotten regular hours by coincidence, as she only left Yakihon to get dinner and to sleep -- she didn’t sleep much, and was long since used to eating just enough to survive. There was even a shower in the bathroom. She could probably just about live here, if she really wanted to -- and, oh, she wouldn’t have to pay rent! “Hey, Yaki, can I move in?” she asked, entirely joking._ _

__“No,” Yaki said, not amused in the least. “I don’t want you living that close to me.” He owned the floor above the shop as well, and that was his home, as was the usual for shop owners in Lost Town._ _

__Eve, however, had an apartment about a ten-minute walk from Yakihon; it was tiny, because it was all she’d been able to afford when she was first making enough money to leave Guaranteed Housing and she’d never found the need to upgrade, since she was never home anyway. Not that she’d be able to afford much better now._ _

__Faintly, she heard the bell over the front door jingle, knocking her out of her thoughts; a minute or so later, Shion’s voice followed. “Eve?”_ _

__Eve sighed and rested her composing stick on top of a type case. She went out into the bookstore. One of her pets hopped up onto the counter; she stroked its head, kind of feeling bad for the little thing that it had mostly been left alone with Yaki the last few days while she’d been in the Ophelia with Shion._ _

__Shion came ‘round a bookcase, followed by a girl who Eve assumed to be his friend. “Eve!” He sped up, almost bounced toward the counter, and Eve, with great strength, resisted the urge to react to how damn happy he looked to see her._ _

__“Eve, this is Safu,” he introduced his friend. Safu eyed Eve with the sort of look one would use to peer through a microscope. “Safu, this is Eve, my… What do I call you?”_ _

__“Master,” Eve replied._ _

__“What?!” With that as the first thing Eve heard out of Safu’s mouth, she wasn’t too optimistic about the day ahead. “Why would he call you master?” Safu asked._ _

__Eve couldn’t tell if Safu was offended or just surprised. Even Shion looked a little shocked. “...He’s my apprentice,” Eve explained, though she thought it should be obvious._ _

__“Oh!” Safu said, a little more loudly than necessary. “Oh. That makes sense.”_ _

__“What did you think I meant?” Eve knew _exactly_ what she thought, but she couldn’t pass up this opportunity to poke at her. _ _

__Shion cut in before Safu could answer in her usual blunt manner. “That’s not really what I asked,” he said, with a look of regret on his face._ _

__“Not -- oh.” Eve smirked. “How cute. You’re trying to be subtle, and figure out if a confession means we’re dating.”_ _

__“Are we?”_ _

__Eve picked up the ball of fur making its way up the register, addressing it rather than Shion, because if she looked at him she was pretty sure she would laugh in his face. “I’ll leave that up to you.”_ _

__“...This is my girlfriend,” Shion said, and Eve nearly choked on air._ _

__“Girlfriend, huh?” Safu said. She leaned across the counter, getting in Eve’s face; Eve met her eyes and didn’t look away. “Hm. You don’t _look_ like --”_ _

__Eve braced for the familiar worst._ _

__“-- the kind of person who would date him.”_ _

__Eve let out her held breath. Not what she’d expected to hear -- _you don’t look like a girl_. “Well, it’s sort of a new thing.”_ _

__“Hm.” She didn’t look happy about it. In fact she looked distinctly unhappy, even a little angry._ _

__“What kind of person is that?” Eve asked. “What would someone who looks like they’re dating him, look like?_ _

__Safu drew herself up to her full height of at least a head shorter than Eve. “Someone who doesn’t wear a superfibre scarf like there’s something she needs to protect herself from.”_ _

__“I see,” Eve said. She tugged at said scarf, which was as always a comforting weight on her shoulders; one with which she survived by everyone else assuming it was a style choice, rather than a safety precaution. She sized up Safu’s clothes -- handmade, as expected; cotton fiber sweater in purple, dark blue pleated wool skirt. “So, more like you?”_ _

__Safu bristled._ _

__“He-e-ey, let’s not fight,” Shion said. He tried to step between them, but Safu held him back._ _

__“Yes, more like me.”_ _

__Eve chuckled. “Well, you’re forward. I like your skirt, by the way.”_ _

__Safu gaped at her for a moment, not sure if she believed the compliment, but then she deflated. “Thank you.”_ _

__“Shion said you like old things,” Eve said. She brushed a finger over the head of the mouse in her hand once more, trying to seem nonchalant about all this. In truth, she was still reeling a little bit, but she couldn’t get too caught up in it._ _

__The statement seemed to set Safu off again, though; Eve heard her suck in a harsh breath and immediately employed damage control. “That’s not a criticism. I mean, look at where I work.”_ _

__“Yes, I do like… old things,” Safu said, still defensive. “I find handmade clothing to be more comfortable than synthetics.”_ _

__“Well, you’re not wrong.” Eve picked at her scarf. “I’d never wear this against my skin. But it has a nice weight.”_ _

__“Hm.” Safu kept making that little hum and it was starting to grate on Eve’s nerves, but it wasn’t like Safu was a bad person. Just paranoid and temperamental, which Eve could sympathise with. “It suits you, I guess.”_ _

__“Thank you.” Eve turned to her… well, her boyfriend, apparently. He had a smile on his face like he couldn’t be happier with how things were going. “So why did you bring her here, anyway? Just to meet me?”_ _

__“I thought I’d show her the books.”_ _

__“Sciences are in the fourth row,” Eve supplied, assuming that was Safu’s area as it had been Shion’s._ _

__“Is any of it up to date?” Safu asked._ _

__“Probably not; that’s why it’s only a small section. If you’re looking for classics, plays, novels, we have plenty of those.”_ _

__“Come on, let’s take a look,” Shion said. He took Safu’s arm and led her into the stacks._ _

__Anyone who’d grown up in No. 6 would protest on principle, but there were worthwhile things in those books. Eve was glad Shion recognised that, and he was passing it on to Safu._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sexto - a sheet of paper folded into sixths and printed on both sides, resulting in twelve pages; a book made up of pages printed in this manner.   
> signature - a group of pages nested one inside the other before binding. most books bound by stitching consist of many signatures, all of the same number of pages. also, the distinctive writing of a person's name to show identification; one's distinctive characteristic; a mark of the key or rhythm with which a piece of music is to be played.


	4. Octavo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A smelly smell that smells smelly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the super long wait. final semester of college was hellish.
> 
> check the tags.

The next day, Eve was alone, or as alone as she could be with three mice chirping nonsense while she sat at the counter, playing games with the people who passed by the window. She counted dogs, bow ties, and miserable children, and were it not for the shiny, whole storefronts and the paved street free of debris and the lack of patches on anyone’s clothing, she might have thought she was back in West Block. Even the most downtrodden neighbourhood of No. 6 was cleaner, richer, brighter than any part of West Block had ever been. 

One in the afternoon came far too slowly; she flipped the sign on the door to _closed_ and locked it, immediately escaping to the Ophelia. 

Yaki was nowhere to be found that morning, which meant he’d disappeared overnight like he did every few months, and he’d probably be back in a week or two with a ton of books and no explanation but until then, Eve was responsible for the running of this place on her own. It was the perfect chance to get another message out. 

She didn’t have much to say; honestly, Inukashi got so much more information on the outside, it angered her to think about it. _But_ , they used her information to get all of theirs in the first place, so it wasn’t like Eve’s position was useless. 

There was just one thing she’d found since the last time she’d sent a message, but it was a big one. An attack on West Block, intended to level the village, kill as many as it could and arrest those left. Sonic weapons would be the main force; there was simply no preparing for it. They could flee, and probably die in the uninhabitable, apocalyptic wild, or they could stay and risk death at the hands of No. 6; their choices depended on their pride. 

Pride was, of course, all they had left. 

Luckily it was still a few months out; they’d do it in the spring, just before the Holy Day. They had time. But even so, they couldn’t relocate all of West Block in that time, and few would even want to move. 

But how to condense all that into fifteen pieces of type? 

Inukashi could barely read in the first place; they’d gotten the help of some ex-journalist, entirely against Eve’s wishes, to sort out the kanji once it became clear that hiragana would not cut it for the messages that needed to go between them. She wondered if that man could read the type, or if he had to turn it to a mirror or, god forbid, print it with some grimy ink substitute to puzzle it out. The leads always came back clean, but she could never really know. 

Eventually she condensed her message to fit the measure, and she placed the type carefully into its case -- a lead-alloy box, miniscule and thin, loaded tight with springs to fill out the space. Eve had considered more elaborate protections, but there were too many ways they could go wrong. Springs were simple; they worked one way. And more importantly, Inukashi knew how to unload them, but anyone who decided to go through her trash wouldn’t be expecting them. 

Eve dropped the sealed box into a bin of dirty rags and mixed it all up a little. She took off her gloves and took up the bin to bring it down to the incinerator drop-off. 

Nothing was incinerated in-house, not like in Chronos. In Lost Town, everything had to be dropped off and carted away through the garbage maintenance, which meant Inukashi’s garbage man would sift through it before incineration, bringing them wearable clothing and bits of metal, including the case of lead. 

The message might take up to a week to get to Inukashi, and there was no way to know if they got it until the next message came back through the scrap paper delivery, with all of the lead pieces Eve sent out used once more, along with wood blocks of the same size, tiny kanji scratched into their surface. Eve could burn those on her own. 

Eve bypassed the usually requisite scan on her burnable trash because of the excessive amounts of lead, which were present even when she wasn’t sending off risky messages in type. Bits of lead shavings and spacing pieces always made it into the rag bins, and it would melt in the incinerators so it wasn’t a problem except that lead made the scanners malfunction. Usually there wasn’t so much as she’d just dropped in, though. But they wouldn’t know that. 

She dumped her trash down its shiny stainless steel odourless hatch, made polite but detached conversation with the waste management supervisors, and left. Eve was an actor before she was a printer, and she never really stopped acting. Even with the fear of failure always looming over her shoulder, she kept her head under the pressure of every risk she took. 

Except Shion. He made her lose her head entirely. 

And there he was, right outside the incinerator pickup station, looking for all the world like he wasn’t dating a wanted criminal, or living in the most disadvantaged quarter of this gleaming city because of said criminal. He leaned back to a fence, looked up to the sky, with the ghost of a smile on his placidly calm face. 

Eve went up to him, ignoring the thing in her chest that felt like fear; Shion didn’t notice anything had changed in his surroundings until she leaned against the fence next to him, close enough for their shoulders to brush. “Hey.”

“Hi.” Shion spared her only a glance before looking back up. “The sky seems bluer today.” 

“Shouldn’t you be at work?” Eve asked. 

“Yes. I asked to step outside because I wanted to look at the sky.” 

“It’s just a sky,” Eve said. 

“But it’s bluer.” 

Eve didn’t understand why that made a difference, but she let him have it anyway. She looked up. 

“Can you see it?” Shion asked. 

She didn’t see it, but it seemed important to him. “I’m not sure.”

“Usually it’s more gray, because of all the post-nuclear atmospheric debris.”

She blinked and looked harder. The sky didn’t usually capture her attention, so she couldn’t compare. “I guess it is bluer,” she said. “If you think it is.”

Shion’s fingers uncurled from the fence behind them and linked in between Eve’s. He hummed, satisfied with that.

Eve got back to Yakihon later than usual; it was already after two-thirty when she flipped the sign to “open” once more. Yaki would never have to know. 

Yet she wondered what Yaki would say if he wasn’t on one of his mysterious trips, and if he’d actually seen Eve get back more than an hour late from her lunch. He’d probably make fun of her. He’d tell her not to get too caught up in her books, in the epic romances they liked to describe; not to try and model her relationship after that, and get lost, literally, in the clouds with Shion, and Shion’s fingers wrapped like a cage around hers. He’d warn her that love doesn’t really exist. 

But she wasn’t trying to emulate those books. Not really. She humoured Shion, sometimes; that was all. She wasn’t even sure she believed in love; if it existed, it was almost certainly a weakness, and she could afford no weaknesses. 

_Shion already makes you weak_ , an unhelpful part of her brain supplied. She crushed it like a bug beneath her foot, but not before a fleeting panic, because it was true. He did make her weak, and that terrified her. 

_You’re going to get me killed._

Eve thought this at least once a day -- more on the days she saw Shion. He was a risk; every day he became more of one. She trusted him, in as much as she could trust anyone, not to reveal her, but somehow he still scared her. He was too earnest, and he knew too much but you wouldn’t know that from talking to him. He was too content in anything and everything that happened to him. 

When it came time to watch No. 6 crumble under the weight of its own sins, would Shion feel enough rage within him to follow Eve’s revolution and set the rubble ablaze? 

The shop door opened, scattering Eve’s thoughts like the shattered walls in her mind’s eye and the half-cleaned pie in the back room. She looked up from her hands, but with an unaffected expression, which could have fooled anyone had the new customer been anyone other than Safu. 

“You’re back,” Eve said, instead of greeting her. “I didn’t expect you to come. Where’s Shion?”

“He’s not with me,” Safu said. She bypassed the books and came up to the counter. “I wanted to talk to you.”

“Me?” 

“Yes. Since you’re dating Shion, I want to get to know your character better.” 

At least she was upfront about it; Eve didn’t think she could put up with an attempt at subtlety on Safu’s part. 

“I want to make sure you’re a good match for him.”

“Shouldn’t he get to decide that?” Eve asked, somewhat forcefully. 

“He might be making the wrong decision.”

“I really don’t want to fight with you, but this isn’t your business,” Eve said. “Get to know me if you really want to take that risk, but if you’re just doing it to tell Shion all the reasons why he shouldn’t like me, don’t bother.” 

“Why would it be a risk to know you?” 

“I’m an asshole,” Eve said, because it was the first thing that came to her mind -- after _shit, shit, fuck, I fucked up_. 

“That’s not a risk.”

“If you say so.” 

Safu seated herself in one of the beaten-up armchairs in a corner and opened up her messenger bag. 

“What are you doing?” Eve asked. 

“Homework.” Safu took out a tablet and a notebook. “Is that alright?” 

“You better buy something…” Eve mumbled. 

“What do you recommend?”

Eve was taken aback; she hadn’t actually been serious, but since Safu was asking, of course she had an answer. “Shakespeare. Not _Romeo and Juliet_ , though -- try _Hamlet_.” 

“Alright. I’ll get it once I finish today’s work.” 

Eve had no doubt she would; for all that Safu was selfish and irritating, she was also honest. Safu didn’t trust Eve, but somehow, Eve trusted her -- at least when it came to her word. 

But when it came to Eve’s revolution? Not a chance. Not a resident of Chronos. 

_Shion is from Chronos too…_

“Shut up,” Eve mumbled to her inner narrative; if Safu heard, she didn’t say anything, and Eve had no doubt she would say something if she’d heard. 

Safu came back the next day, and the next, always staying for hours and buying a book on her way out. Eve wondered if the City would find her actions questionable; residents of Chronos came through every once in a while, but usually just a single trip, maybe two, on business to buy fancy letterpress books Eve had spent months setting in type. Not to do homework, which Eve eventually found out was a senior thesis for her high school (since when did high schoolers write theses?), and to buy antiquated plays translated from English, in worn mass production copy. 

But no police showed up, even after a week, so maybe this wasn’t out of the ordinary. 

“Where’s the owner of this place?” Safu asked, sometime in the second week. Shion was around, too, looking at books during his lunch break (he got a whole hour, and Eve thought that was just unfair). He looked over when he heard the question and tilted his head; Shion hadn’t seen Yaki either, though he just now noticed. 

“Business trip,” Eve responded. “He never tells me about them, just disappears. Usually it’s a few weeks. He always comes back with a truckload of books.” 

“That’s somewhat unprofessional.” Safu said this in such a way that left no room for disagreement, but Eve disagreed with her anyway. 

“Is anything about this place professional?” Eve asked. “We have pet mice, we eat lunch behind the counter, I set type in a bra and apron. We literally have books piled on the floor.” 

“Do you want me to organise them?” Shion asked. 

“No. My point is, Yaki’s random business trips are nothing out of the ordinary for Yakihon.” 

“You’re kind of… grumpy today,” Shion pointed out. 

“I’m always grumpy.”

“More than usual, I mean.” Well, at least he didn’t try to deny her grumpiness. Shion came close to where Eve was sitting behind the counter, and reached for her face. “What’s wrong?”

Eve grabbed Shion’s wrist before his hand could connect. “Don’t touch me.” 

Safu was staring openly. Eve ignored her. 

“There’s a… smell. In the Ophelia.” Eve let Shion’s hand go. “It’s been getting worse the past few days, and I can’t figure out where it’s coming from. And it pisses me off, because I can’t get any work done back there. The vents don’t help; the smell goes away while they’re on, but comes back once I turn them off. And I can’t leave them on all day, the generator will overheat.” The faults of old technology, Eve thought, but she wouldn’t say that out loud. 

“Well then, let’s help you look for it!” Shion seemed all too excited to walk around a smelly print shop. Even Safu got up to help. 

The first thing Eve noticed when she opened the door to the Ophelia was the horrifying smell. She knew it was there, of course, but it had only gotten worse since the last time she was in here. It smelled about as bad as the West Block, maybe worse, and Eve hadn’t been there in years. Safu actually gagged at it. 

The second thing she noticed were the three mice pawing at the bathroom door in the back. “That’s where you three got to,” Eve mumbled. She hadn’t seen her mice since the day before. They always came back, of course, but she still worried when they escaped. 

Eve walked in, grimacing as the thick smell of rot enveloped her. 

“It smells like someone died in here,” Safu said. Her hands covered the lower half of her face. 

“Have you ever seen a dead body before?” Eve asked. 

“I have. In my classes I’ve performed sixteen autopsies.” 

“Great.” Eve went to the back of the room and knelt down to pick up her mice, but when she next breathed in she shouted and fell back on her ass. “Augh!” She too covered her nose and mouth. “I think I found it. Did Yaki forget to flush before he left?” Eve stood and, bracing herself, turned the knob. 

It was locked. 

“Huh?” The door only locked from the inside, and there shouldn’t be anyone in there. “Shion, can you hand me one of those tweezers?” 

Shion handed it over; Eve stuck one of the prongs into a little hole on the handle until the lock released. 

She opened the door. 

Immediately, Safu screamed. Shion scrambled away, knocking into a case of type drawers. Even Eve stepped back in shock. 

Yeah, Yaki hadn’t flushed the toilet. But that was the least of their problems. 

Yaki hadn’t left either. He was still there -- and he was dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> octavo: a sheet of paper folded into eighths and printed on both sides, resulting in sixteen pages; a book made up of pages printed in this manner. this is the most common method of mass-production book printing.


	5. Duodecimo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the run from the long arm of the law.

“I’ll call the police,” Safu said; her voice was clear and strong, but when Eve looked at her, she could tell Safu was unsettled. 

Eve reached out and took Safu’s wrist gently in her hand. She closed the bathroom door. Safu stared at her, confused. 

“Do you think that’s the best idea right now?” Eve said, in a very low voice. Regardless, she knew their IDs would pick it up loud and clear. “I mean, the corpse smells. We shouldn’t bother them with this.” It sounded weak, so so weak, but Eve was shaking from nerves and it was all she could come up with.

“Eve’s right,” Shion said. Eve could tell, though, that he wasn’t backing up what she said, but rather, he knew exactly why Eve was so nervous. Even if he didn’t know what was coming, he trusted her.

Eve felt like she didn’t deserve it. 

“He’s even got flies,” Shion pointed out, though he’d only seen one, dead on Yaki’s face. 

“I think it was a bee, actually,” Safu corrected. “And I’m sure the police have dealt with worse smells.” 

“Let’s at least get some air freshener first,” Shion suggested. He sounded every bit the airheaded hive mind drone that Eve thought most No. 6 residents to be, but his eyes were wide with fear. 

Of course, Safu noticed. “Why do you two look so afraid?”

Eve’s hand slid further down Safu’s wrist, taking her ID bracelet with it. She snapped the thing in half in her hands. 

“What are you doing?!” Safu’s voice raised. She watched as Eve broke her own bracelet, and Shion his own as well. 

“Sorry. But we have to go.” Eve took her wrist again and pushed her toward the back door. “Go, both of you. Down the alley to the left, then take the third right.” Eve scooped up her mice from the floor and handed them to Shion; they crawled up his arm to perch on his shoulders. “Stay in the shadows until I get there. If I’m more than five minutes, follow the mice to get out of the city, and go to West Block. Ask around for the dogkeeper.”

Shion took over in dragging Safu out; she continued to ask for explanations, none of which came. “Please, Safu; we’ll explain later.” 

As soon as they were out the door, Eve grabbed her jacket and scarf, throwing them on, and pulled the scarf up over her face. She took out some of the fluids in the hazard cabinet - type wash, roller wash, paint thinner, inks. She uncapped several bottles and threw them into the corners of the room, then another into the store; the inks she left in a pile in the middle of a puddle of paint thinner, the remaining solvent bottles arranged haphazardly around the pile. She took one ink can and a rolled-up piece of rag paper, then headed for the door as her eyes started to water from the fumes. 

“Sorry, Yaki,” Eve whispered. She stuffed one end of the paper into the ink can, and lit it on fire with the lighter she kept in her pocket. As soon as the flame caught and started a promising burn, she set it down by the door and dashed out, letting the door slam shut behind her. 

Eve ran down the alley and made the turn; Shion started running as soon as he saw her. 

“What did you do?” Shion asked. 

“You’ll see. It’s a signal.”

A moment later, there was a loud crashing noise; the smell of smoke and paint filled the air. Eve winced, even as she continued to run; type wasn’t cheap, after all, and the oily lead wouldn’t hold up well to fire, much less a literal explosion. On top of that, she was leaving Yaki’s body, as well as his whole life’s work, to go up in flames. All those books, some of them impossible to find elsewhere in No. 6 because they were “discouraged literature” and no one wanted to sell something they thought was obscene… they would all go down to ash, along with, most likely, half the block. 

Still… there was no one in the world who wanted to destroy No. 6 quite like Eve did. And there was no one who knew the weaknesses of No. 6 quite like Eve did -- no one but the people who built it. Without her, there was no chance of that destruction coming about. 

So she ran, and gripped harder around Shion’s wrist, and blinked the tears out of her eyes. 

Safu had stopped asking for explanations; the explosion had made her realise the level of danger they were in, if not the reasoning. She stayed quiet as Shion pulled her towards the wall; as Nezumi guided them to a loose panel; as the three of them squeezed through the tiny, cobwebbed space and out to the dusty wasteland beyond, to the distant blemish on the horizon. 

They didn’t stop running, not until they crossed the full three miles’ distance from the wall to the outskirts of West Block. They’d unlinked their hands back at the hole in the wall, and kept pace despite Safu and Shion’s slightly lower athleticism. Fear could make one accomplish incredible feats, after all. 

A child, long-haired and dressed in rags, waited for them at the edge of town, outside what appeared to be a partially burned-out hotel. On their either side were several dogs, of varying breeds and sizes. They stood abruptly when they sensed the three teens running up, noses sniffing the wind. 

“Well, well, well; look what the rat dragged in,” the child said, from their perch on a low stone wall. Eve, Shion, and Safu came to a rest before them, the latter two collapsing to their knees and Eve remaining upright, but all breathing heavily. “Are we supposed to make room for them, too?” 

“I’ll keep them at my place,” Eve answered. 

The child scoffed. “ _Your_ place? What makes you think it’s still yours?”

“You wouldn’t have sold it,” Eve said, like she believed it. “You owe me too much, Inukashi.”

“I don’t owe you a damn _thing_.” Inukashi spat at her. 

“Wait, _you’re_ the dogkeeper?” Shion asked, incredulous.

“Yup. What were you expecting? A burly old man with a beard, wrestling rottweilers with his bare hands?”

Shion shrugged; he didn’t want to admit that was exactly what he was expecting.

“Heh. Even the miniature poodle inside could take you down, I bet.”

“So, is my house still available?” Eve asked. 

“Hmph.” Inukashi crossed their arms. “Yeah. No-one’d want to live in those dusty old books, anyway.” 

“Books?” Safu asked. Of all the things she could question now that they were away -- _why did we run? why are we here? who the hell are you anyway?_ \-- she chose to ask about books. Eve couldn’t feel even the slightest bit surprised. 

“Yes. You’ll see.” Eve held out her hand; Inukashi sighed and fished a key out of their pocket. 

“You better make these last few years worth my while, Nezumi.” 

She smiled; it was almost nice to hear that name again. The right name, not the mask, not the actor. Just Nezumi; just the rat, the sewer scum, the trash-nibbling, wriggling creature, clawing through dirt, still a thousand times more noble than any human. 

Nezumi folded her arms; behind her, Shion stood and helped Safu up. “We will.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> duodecimo: a sheet of paper folded into twelfths and printed on both sides, resulting in twenty-four pages; a book made up of pages printed in this manner.
> 
> yep, that’s really it. sorry this took almost a year; i was seriously not feeling inspired to finish, and on top of that i forgot all my plans and only found my notes, um, yesterday. i sort of thought this would go a few more chapters but nope. i had half-formed ideas for where this could go if i continued, but i intended to end it here.


End file.
